Twenty years ago, on November 18th, 1993, the music band Nirvana agreed to an unplugged performance at the Sony Music Studios in New York City. It was part of a television series called “MTV Unplugged”, which invited popular music groups to perform their songs “naturally”. Unlike in a studio, the sound of instruments would not be electronically amplified and engineered; the artists had rather to rely on the “raw” performance of a piano, a cello, or a guitar. The recording became a milestone of musical history: The album “MTV Unplugged in New York” went on to become number 1 on the Billboard 200, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as one of the “Greatest Albums of all Time”.

When writing my new book, What’s the Future of Business, Changing the way businesses create experiences, I felt that text wasn’t enough. So, I sought the wit and creativity of my good friend from the ole Web 2.0 days Hugh MacLeod aka @gapingvoid to help summarize each chapter in the form of a toon. Then we got to talking, why limit the cartoons to just the book?

Guest post by Greg Narain (@gregarious), co-founder of Chute, a social media platform that helps brands and publishers obtain rights to UGC content.

Customer-contributed stories are not only powerful, they’re also influential and important. Yesterday, customers conveyed their stories through text and voice. Today, we’ve moved to visually rich tools like photos and videos. While compelling to look at at face value, there’s quite a bit more hidden within.

In 2012, Google along with Jim Lecinski published a fantastic book that explored how digital customers made decisions in what Google refers to as “The Zero Moment of Truth.” The ZMOT as it’s abbreviated, helps strategists discover relevant strategies and tactics on how to show up at the right place, at the right time and with the right content in a digital ecosystem.

As he finished a game of Cut The Rope on his iPhone, my young godson asked what my phone was like when I was his age. I broke it down for him. I was in my twenties before someone offered to take north of ten thousand dollars for a basic digital camera, and not much less for a GPS device. And I got my first basic mobile phone (I explained that means just making phone calls and sending text messages) as I approached thirty.

There are four fundamental truths shaping today’s digital ecosystem, which I outline in my upcoming book, Your Brand: The Next Media Company.

Number one. There is a content and media surplus in the market place. There’s no shortage of advertising, marketing messages, mobile devices or social interruptions trying to command our attention, daily.

Peter Guber is one of the most successful yet grounded business leaders I have a pleasure of calling a friend. There are many sides to Peter and chances are you may know him from one of his many distinguished ventures,

- Chairman and CEO of the multimedia Mandalay Entertainment Group
- Past president of Sony Pictures
- Producer of popular motion pictures including Batman, Rain Man, The Color Purple, just to name a few
- Co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Golden State Warriors
- Author of the best-selling book Tell to Win
- Professor at UCLA School of Business

I’m looking forward to seeing you at next week’s Pivot Conference in New York. We published our formal agenda here. Our friends at doodle.ly though, decided to re-imagine the concept of what an agenda could be by visualizing portions of it as doodles! I hope you love them as much as I do…

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to present in London at a special Adobe event to celebrate the launch of What’s the Future of Business: Changing the way businesses create experiences. Immediately following the presentation, I joined Adobe’s Jeremy Waite to shoot an episode of Marketing Minute.

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ABOUT ME

Brian Solis is a digital analyst, anthropologist, and also a futurist. In his work at Altimeter Group, Solis studies the effects of disruptive technology on business and society. He is an avid keynote speaker and award-winning author who is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders in digital transformation.

His most recent book, What's the Future of Business: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences (WTF), explores the landscape of connected consumerism and how business and customer relationships unfold in four distinct moments of truth. His previous book, The End of Business as Usual, explores the emergence of Generation-C, a new generation of customers and employees and how businesses must adapt to reach them. In 2009, Solis released Engage, which is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to market, sell and service in the social web.